


Narrative of a Minor Heroine

by lizzledpink



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Driest Prose Ever, Multi, Semi-Epistolary
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-09-08
Updated: 2011-09-08
Packaged: 2017-10-23 13:32:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/250833
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lizzledpink/pseuds/lizzledpink
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I have chosen, in supplement to those things which you already know about me and the game I and my friends played as children, to write a form of memoir towards you, dear reader, depicting events as I knew them and relationships as I saw then and see now. I hope you find it to be an enlightening experience.</p><p>- TT</p>
            </blockquote>





	Narrative of a Minor Heroine

I suppose what first appealed to me about John was his sense of humor. I, at the time, was possessed of none myself, but for the sardonic comments I would sometimes make. Colloquially, I could not "take a joke," as it were. I had lived up until then a lonely life, until such time as Jade Harley and her two friends found me, and forged a connection that would bind us not only for the coming years, but even until the dawn of a new age, until a game would be played that would have such effects as to paradoxically initiate our own births: the disease of friendship, spread across form one child to another, a sickening, addictive, unending ailment that I never wanted to go away.

It was through these bonds that we would all, in the end, change. Where we began as children, we flourished, and in doing so we lost some part of ourselves that defined us as such. When the dawn of April 14th, 2009 broke, nothing was the same, not a single thing. 

I could feel the darkness, pounding in my mind, still. A shade of what it had been, of course, but no less was it powerful. No less did the rage, the terror, strain to consume me with every thought I dared to make rip at me, remind me what I had done, and what I had almost done.

And that darkness, the recollection, did change me. Retrospect became my cruelest pasttime, where it had once been the best; I still soldiered through and did what I could. I wanted to be healed, and I have only never known how to heal myself through excruciating pain, at the first.

When I was young, my mother told me stories. I was afraid of the dark, and I was afraid of the monsters. Mother would pick up a book, and from that book she would tell me tales of demons, stealing souls from children in the night, or perhaps inspiring the deepest lust within the hearts of the pure, inciting greed within the most generous of souls. And I was told to be a good girl; no, I was never a told that. I was told instead to be the best. I was to be the smartest, the most beautiful, the brightest flower of my mother's life. 

Marianne Lalonde sought the day when I would stand upon a pedastal (higher, thankfully, than the solid pits she normally placed me in) and speak before students my 

age, graduating, and all of them far, far less in nature than I. A kind woman, perhaps. A petty woman, certainly. I have no illusions about my mother's true nature, and I do not intend to start deluding myself about her ways any time soon.

And because she was my mother, I met her expectations anyway. When she told me to jump, I did not say how high. I looked at her, and judged her. I saw the curve of a brow and the twitch of a finger, and then I jumped, knowing precisely the difference she wanted to not because she told me, but because it was what I supposed to know, and I had to learn however possible.

Mother wanted perfection, and she got it. When I was a little older, perhaps nine, yet still alone, I realized an imperfection of mine. I had fear. The only fear, I had read in stories, was fearing fear itself. All other fears felt, to me, entirely invalid. They were irrational, and I was to become a creature of the most elite reason and logical patterns. That was my only path. So, if such fears were illogical, then the logical solution was to remove the illogicality from my life. Forcibly.

The dark, was of course, the simplest. Every night of my life, I had slept with the light of the nearest closet on. I kept the door shut, but the point was, it was not pitch black. I could see. It was what I could not see - the invisible, the unknown things that were planning to abduct me and break me and hurt me - that I feared, even 

if such things were not there. Such figments of my imagination could not be allowed to continue, not when my mind had better things to play with. Perhaps, I thought, I would save such creativity instead for my mother, and for taunting her - slowly, frustratingly making her pay for her action against me, for making me into what I was, a surly young girl with no path but perfection and no choice but forging ahead. That was my thought.

And of course, from that thought spawned the fiction. I wrote stories about wizards, at first, because they were fantasy. If I was fighting the rational, then what better to fight with than stories and words? Intangible things, full only of contextual meaning rather than the simple denotations laid before me. Magic was the most illogical thing I could think of, almost as illogical as stories about frightening monsters planning to gobble up all the little girls. And then, of course, I discovered the beauty that was 'slash' fiction, and from there, well, an entire world of angering my strict, alcoholic mother opened up before me.

But that's another matter entirely, and I should not digress from the point. 

I was nine. And for the first time in my entire memory, I decided I was going to sleep without a light.

It was horrible. I was awake almost the entire night, begging for the tiredness to consume the fear and drag me from darkness into a light, into the fanciful things the brain does in dreams. My pleas were not heard, not for many hours. I wanted to whimper. There was a man in the corner. He had jumped through the window, wielding a chainsaw, and any minute now he would turn it on. I didn't consider that chainsaws needed to be powered with cords. I just knew he was going to kill me, and I kept waiting, because any second now he would strike.

I don't know when it ended, but I woke up, so I must have fallen asleep sometime. I slept dreamlessly, but I did not sleep well. 

I went through the day tired, but I was determined. Whatever else, I would not let this beat me. It was simply the dark. It wasn't even a thing; it was the description - the mere description! - of an absence of light. If I couldn't get to sleep in it, how was I ever to move? That was my goal, in the end - an acceptance of the darkness so complete and thorough that I could walk through the dark unhindered, without the constant paralyzation to which I was accustomed. 

Through pain, I would do this, whatever it took.

The next night was as bad as the first, only now, it was no madman daring to chase me down. Instead, it was simply a ghost. A haunting maiden, like something out of a Japanese folk tale - slaughtered, thought I, by her father when she dared not obey his wishes. Her neck was slit, a dribble of crusty, ghostly blood draining through, silver like spoons. 

She had come, I was convinced, not under the guise of seeking help or seeking perhaps to exist in peace, nor even just to observe. Quite plainly and quite unlike the ghosts one might know of from Harry Potter, she wanted to kill me. She was truly a violent spirit. She wanted to inflict pain simply because she herself had once experienced it in droves, and wished for others to experience even a measure of the hurt that consumed her. And we, unlike her, could die.

I was certain that night that her grasp, the rake of her nails across my own throat, perfectly mirroring the knife driven through hers, would be my end.

And in the morning, I woke up.

One final night was the worst, and I still don't know how I, nine years old, quite managed it.

I will not recount all the horror my mind established that evening. There were too many, and also, one need only open a grimoire of darkness to see the nature of the hauntings that night. Azazel himself came, many-eyed and plasmic, etching his symbol on my skin - on the shoulder, first, and then my cheek, and then the inside of the wrist, nearly but not quite drawing blood. Demons and ghouls and creatures all bent, and worse still? This time, they came not from the shadows I was learning to navigate, but from the shaded corners of my mind.

The monsters did not come from the absence of light. They came from me, leaping forth from my dreams into reality, and threatening to tear apart my little sunshine world. 

I was nine years old and scared of monsters. But I bore the pain of facing them, and then, quite suddenly, I wasn't.

I awoke the next morning, and proceeded through my day, yawning, waiting until night.

And when it was night, I was hesitant, but not scared. When I shut off the light, I slipped into bed without worry that a spirit would possess my soul. Honestly, I thought that if such a spirit were planning such, it probably would have already done the task on one of the previous nights, and to my knowledge, I was still me. For the most part.

The next few nights were full of restful sleep. I thought of monsters, sometimes, but why should they want to devour me? I had already beaten them. I had proven that they were irrational to fear, because if they did exist, well, I still wouldn't be afraid. Not anymore. Or, so I told myself. I told myself tales again and again, and slowly, the tales fell out of the realms of myth and came to be true. I did not fear the monsters.

Still, it was my goal to not only remove all traces of fear, but be certain that the sight of a monster would not even faze me. I was eleven when I first picked up the grimoire of my own will, and flipped through. Where once the stories would have left me tossing and turning all night, they now enthralled me with a sense of wonder, and a healthy respect for their power. They were Dark Gods, the beings restrained within these aging pages, but they were Gods nonetheless. The fear had turned to curiosity, and the curiosity to wonder. 

Around the time when Jade would first contact me, smiley faces ablaze, that wonder was on the verge of becoming a passion. Jade revealed to me that her interests did not lie anywhere close to fantasy; she was a girl grounded in science. Yet, conversely, she intrigued and confused me. She claimed to have simply stumbled upon my name, but I knew of no forums of a type she would frequent where she might have picked up my chumhandle. A less conscientious girl might call it fate. A more aware girl, such as myself, might slowly learn Jade's secret over time. 

And I did. I wasn't sure that I believed her, but I did learn her secret, to an extent. 

Through her, I met Dave. He was my paradise, for while horrorterrors did hold much of my interest, I had two other passions: writing, as mentioned, and closely tied to it, psychology. 

I never could understand other humans when I was young. I felt old among my peer group at the public school which mother first had me attend. The girls wanted to play games where they pretended they were husband and wife, married, cooking for each other and raising a child. 

I wanted no part in such foolishness. Meanwhile, the boys played soccer. None of them had any capacity for higher thought, that much was clear to me. Was this a true depiction of society and public schooling? I had not found my way yet, at the time, but I was still a girl who loved her books, who loved to learn, and who loved her mother. At the time I needed nothing more to decide quite rightly that I wanted nothing to do with these plebeian fools. I would deal only, I swore to myself, with the best. The ones capable of keeping up with me. 

Elitist? Oh, completely.

The years would sweeten my temper towards the fools I believed dominated the earth, and this was likely the fault of my three online friends. Dave appeared at first to me an uncultured swine, with little capacity for anything beyond disgusting innuendo and the oddest rhymes. For a time, I wanted no part in his shenanigans. However, he was persistent. I think he found enjoyment in needling me. I was an only child, and the daughter of a single mother, at that. I was not used to the male mind, and while I was more than aware of the facts of life, I saw no necessity to focus my life on the study of human sexuality, how it did not seem to apply to me, or the ways in which immature preteens tended to color their language with terms directly relating to the matter of sex. 

He was disgusting, and I unprepared. I learned to hate the red text that so often popped up upon my otherwise unsullied screen. I had no interest in the value of "puppet dick" or other such fruitful endeavors on the Strider family's behest. But it dawned on me, as I delved into yet another complex tome on the ways of the mind, that I should analyze that feeling. Why did I hate him?

I didn't hate him. I hated how he could get to me. I hated how he was the person capable of peeling away my skin and making his words, while silent, screech in my ears louder than the most fierce bird of prey. How did he manage it? With innuendo and rap, both subjects beneath my interest. No, not beneath my interest. That was a lie I told myself. The truth was, I had no experience with either, and thus, no way to counter them. Time and time again Dave Strider would engage me in a battle of wits, and he'd come out on top. 

The truth was, I irrationally feared Dave Strider, for he could make me want to pick up my mouse and use it to break my monitor, or he could have me sitting there, blushing, stunned, disgustingly _virginal_. And as all fears of the kind must, it had to stop.

So, I learned. There came a day when I replied to his rapping with atrocious poetry, styled after my favourite poet, T. S. Eliot, of course. Some day I would love to see what Strider would make of the Love Song of Alfred J. Prufrock, for even my weak-willed attempt at his style was enough to send him off balance and make him ask questions. He began not to tease but to insult me. I had angered him. I had won.

I began to take his obsession with innuendos and play that into my hands as well. If I was going to be a psychologist, I was going to give him the therapy of his life. 

What could cause a young boy to be so fixated on phallic imagery? When he joked about cocks and roosters, I reversed his play, speculating on his sexuality. His response was even more enjoyable to read than the outburst he'd suffered from after the first poetry incident.

Success. I had mastered my fear. Dave was still able to win, sometimes, but our conversations had become less like nightmares and more like games, with each of us gunning for first.

One day, it dawned upon me. Dave was, in fact, the thing I'd always wished for. He was (and by then, over many conversations where I was forced to hold my ground against such vulgarities, I was unafraid to use such terminology) a psychologist's wet dream. Playing with Dave and his myriad insecurities was, in a word, fun. 

It wasn't until Jade herself applied the label that I realised we had, in fact, become friends.

I have always made it my goal in life, where things are murky, to try and elucidate all that I see. Mine is a life striving for clarity and understanding, shining light upon those things which plague the ignorant humanity. I judged for myself wrong and right, correct and incorrect, rather than allowing myself to be led. I was, of course, terribly adolescent about it most of the time, and I still retained my elitism in some capacity, but some of what I knew had morphed into a hint of maturity, in some ways, and a growing sense that above all else, acceptance would be my goal. Denial is the darkest way of thought, I learned. Denial allows shadows to grow where none exist. Adhering to the truth in all cases, logical or otherwise, was the best course. I would not lie to myself, nor to others. Much.

And as such, John Egbert was the essence, when I met him, of that which I most loathed.

His first words were in fact a lie. Later, I would learn that such lies were in fact that odd phenomenon known as a "prank," but there was no difference to me when his bright blue blazed its way across my screen.

"Ambassador from Sweden," indeed.

He apologized. That was John Egbert's way; it didn't matter whether the fault belonged with him or with another, for he would apologize for any wronged feelings no matter what the situation. I would find over time that John was precisely my opposite. Where I would keep my amusement sealed behind a careful smirk, his would bounce across a room loudly, complete with chuckles and even a few snorts. I would not experience the full effect of an Egbert laugh until far, far later, but through the simplicity of his words his sheer enthusiasm still managed to glow. 

Of my three friends, his text was the most bearable to read, but his words were sometimes the worst. He did not, for a long time, prank me again. He seemed during that time to be sincere. John would share tales of Nicolas Cage and bunnies and other ridiculous movies for which I had no taste. But they were John's life. I enjoyed his narration of the movies, however. John had a way of telling a story that left me wishing I were watching it myself, even if later I watched the scene and found it wanting. John somehow made it interesting. Through his dictation, I was able, with him, to literarily take apart the plots and themes that Nicolas Cage's movies seemed to hold. I revealed parallels in Cage's acting where John had seen nothing but his hero, leading him to think.

I was discovering that perhaps people needed to be taught how to think. John was one of these cases.

John was always smart, but as with Dave, it took me the longest time to understand that. He showed flashes of intelligence, and I considered them mistakes or coincidences. I did the same with Dave. Jade's intellect was undeniable, particularly when she began to talk of theoretical physics as though they were on the same scale and level of difficulty as an episode of 'Squiddles,' that impossibly saccharine children's show.

One day I would wear a Squiddles shirt, and proudly, yet with a few edits of my own. I took a coin and rubbed away its gruesome, big eyes, leaving only slits. The resulting effect was a symbol that closely resembled a skull, unless one paid close attention and realized the nature of its previous shape. I wore it for Jade, and her love of Squiddles, and for Dave - what could be more 'ironic' than me with a Squiddles shirt? - and for John, because he was always telling me to have fun with things, and I couldn't deny that there was a sense of pride and amusement when I wore it.

But that day was far off. And on this day, I was going to be torn down.

It was perhaps a month after our first meeting when John dared to attempt pranking me once more. I do not in fact recall what exactly the prank was, but it was good, and for a time he had me fooled. But when I discovered his duplicity, I raged.

I'm not sure how long I displayed my tantrum, but it was easily long enough for John to fall into silence while I went on and on about morality and the importance of not playing jokes with life and other important things.

And what did John Egbert say to me? When I had finished, or nearly, he told me firmly to stop. And then, he told me to shut up, and that I was wrong, and to my complete astonishment he went and deconstructed my rant against him, piece by piece. For just as long as I had raged, he calmly refuted each and every statement I had made, as I stared at the screen, jaw slightly hinged, unable to do anything but allow the analytical portion of my brain attempt to find fault with his words. His only fault was in capitalization, and I knew that wasn't a fault. That was a style. The lack of capitalization meant simply that this was John speaking, and amazingly, it sounded like him. Or at least, John with a a few more IQ points. Certainly more than I had expected.

I was shocked, amazed, and ashamed. Deeply ashamed. All along I had believed John to be more an object than a thinking person. I liked to observe him and make a psychological profile for him based on his interactions with his father, his moans about clowns, and his dedication to all things Nic Cage, but I never thought of him 

as an equal being. He was lesser to my intellect, and lesser to me. 

With his soft rebuttal, I was now discovering that I was in the wrong. All along, John had been capable of such thought, but he had not chosen to flaunt it. There were more important things to him. Kindness, and laughter. Making people smile. Simple things in which I rarely held interest. Friendliness had brought John along a path in 

life that was at times hard, but kept him ultimately happy.

Such a curious word, happy. I knew the meaning of pleasure, and had for a long time. I was even familiar with the sexual connotation sometimes associated with pleasure - thanks, of course, to Strider. And that was the form in which I was most accustomed to the idea of happiness. Happiness was a thing attained not so much as an overarching theme of my life as a goal to be constantly revived in short bursts. Successes made me happy. Learning things made me happy. But in time, that happiness would fade, for its nature was not true. It was a false happiness more akin to enjoying something than to truly being overwhelmed with delight at life.

The sad truth was, until John, I had not belived happiness was possible. Between my moments of pleasure, I would experience no lightheartedness. My mind was a place for the most part riddled with boredom and attempts to fill the cracks between the things I liked. On occasion, my thoughts would dip below the line, and turn dark and cold. You can think of it as though my brain was a house, and in that house there was a cold, dark cellar. That's not in the least what it was like, of course, but it does give a general concept. Against my will, I would step into that cellar and feel its chill wrap around me, and then came the thoughts I did not like - the ones I stuffed away down there to freeze and die, not that they ever did.

John taught me that happiness could exist. He, like all people, had his bad days. I mean it when I say bad days. A bad day, for John, was a day where something went wrong. Or maybe he just woke up on the wrong side of the bed. It was easy to tell when John was having a bad day. The exclamation points would disappear from his writing, and sometimes, his answers would disappear altogther. Many a night I remember sending him messages, thinking that I was dropping letters into the abyss never to be seen again. On the worst days, he might say "hi," and perhaps mention that he was having a bad day.

Sometimes we would talk. Sometimes, he would feel better for it. I was no professional therapist, but I was learning, and I had my books. I suppose I had a bit of empathy as well. I do have caring for other human beings, but when I so detest much of what they do, it's hard for me to display it. When it came to John, an established friend, I couldn't help but want to somehow ease whatever pained him. 

John was unique. Perhaps there are names for what he is. Perhaps the stricter adherents of therapy would give him a diagnosis, and perhaps that diagnosis would resemble any number of things. Depression, perhaps, or maybe Bipolar Disorder. Possibly ADHD.

I spit upon those theories. Modern psychology is too reliant on labels. It has become a field of the lazy, a field for doctors rather than hard workers. There is no expectation of help in the field. Instead, adults who think they know better will sit a child down and talk to them, and through that simple talk they will make assumptions. Some might be correct, and some might be false. From those assumptions, they form an opinion, and out of that opinion they form a label. For psychiatrists it's even worse, because there's one more step involved: it's off to the medicine cabinet for the poor soul placed before them.

Psychology should be a field for those who truly wish to either understand the way the mind works or to help others to understand their own minds. Is it so terrible to actually give effort to a client? It is so easy to give out a diagnosis in a matter of minutes. How does one know the true nature of a mind, unless one has thoroughly plumbed its depths? Does one aid a child in need more by giving them another hated label, with connotations (whether the psychologist is aware or not) of being somehow 'wrong,' or is it better to come to a conclusion slowly, to ask questions and find answers, and make the treatment fit the child instead of the other way around? And with the diagnosis, psychiatrists give out medicine - often, I feel, where it is neither needed nor wanted. The entire field is a tangled web of foolishness with a lack of thorough understanding. A nightmare of a realm.

I am glad that John's father never put him through such a thing. Instead, John was taught to deal with himself and learn emotional control as best as he could. John has always been a child of great highs and deep lows. 

On the one day every few weeks when John has a bad day, sometimes I can help him. But other times, I would send him paragraphs of questions and sentences and get not a single response. Eventually, I would give up. I would sigh and walk away from my laptop, wishing that I could do more. And John will be curled up in his bed, clutching his pillow, shutting his eyes and trying to shut out the rest of the world. 

And there are also days when John is angry. I won’t describe them. Let it only be said that they are rare, but they are, on occasion, terrifying beyond belief. It is hard to anger John, thankfully, or perhaps we would all live in constant fear.

But those are only sometimes days. For every other day in eternity, John is cheerful. Unbearably cheerful, in fact. His emotions, to use the cliche, are cars on rollercoasters, and in talking to him his mood is always beautifully apparent. I am a being of reserved nature, hiding the extent to which I care, or don't care, about everything. John is entirely open. He says what he thinks, and he says it plainly. He's intelligent, but he doesn't allow it to get in the way of his passion simply for the act of living, for being friends and making friends and all else that happens every day around him. 

John lives with a fervor for existence that I could never hope to match.

Through him, I learned so much. I learned, of course, to take a joke - terribly important, that. It is to John that I owe my sense of humor. It is to John that I owe what humility I possess, and the graciousness with which I accept times when I am wrong (well, attempted graciousness, at least). And through him, I learned to be less closed off. John's way of filling the world with emotion makes it not only hard but nearly unbearable not to share emotion in return.

John has his faults. He can be naive, and innocent. He can be foolish and forgetful. He can even, once in a while, be a complete jerk. But I, along with Dave and Jade no doubt, will swear on anything that John is probably the kindest, finest example of a human being alive.

It was only natural, when the game began, that he should be the leader of us all.

The game changed us. For me, it invoked the nightmares of my youth. My necessity to overcome my fear of darkness was replaced by not respect but obsession for such monsters. The horrorterrors I had read about were real. They were the voices, whispering to me as I slept and played in my dark little dreamland. I trusted them, and then, I fell in.

The fact that I was overwhelmed and nearly destroyed by the horrorterrors wasn't a big deal. The reason I still tremble, sometimes, when I think of the eldritch tongues that burned and scalded my throat, has nothing to do with what atrocities they animated in my mind. No. Those memories are terrible because I invited them in. 

I didn't even resist. I thought I would become a Dark Goddess, but I was only left with nightmares that would plague me, and a sense that I had seen the edge of humanity, leaped off, and returned, shaken, at the last.

Few things scare me now. What, for fear, could possibly match such almost-carnal knowledge of sin itself? That is how I changed. I learned of hubris, and I learned of falling. I learned to trust and accept. I learned death.

I am glad I did not learn a lack of melodrama.

Dave learned self-worth. Before, his personality was a copy, and he only a sycophant of his brother. He still plays with swords now, but he no longer raps. He still makes sweet mixes, but there aren't any words. He found that he can, in fact, be a hero when he must. More importantly, he found out that he was his own person. 

Nowadays, he does even more of that ironic hipster photography, but it's not ironic or hipster anymore. Every picture taken is carefully dated and put into a book. It makes him happy, I believe. It's a nice change.

Jade grew up. She carries her fondness for Squiddles, animals and plants with a more adult outlook. Her smiley faces are still common, but she rarely uses more than one exclamation point at a time, not anymore. Perhaps because she only had Bec before, she had about the same maturity as an eight-year-old - if one with the ability to see the future as she slept, and with a level of literacy fitting of her physical age. She has adopted a new appreciation for frogs. Nobody is surprised.

John seemed instead to learn temperance. His words now carry weight that they didn't before. Younger, he was as Icarus, flying to the sun and to the waves, melting and wetting his wings and turn. Luckily, he would always swoop away from either fate. Now he flies evenly. The breadth of his emotions still amazes me, and he is still open, but he seems to think before he speaks. Perhaps in the game, he learned the power of words. There were too many things he had said and regretted, and even more I think he still regrets the things that had gone unspoken. 

We don't talk about the game very often, and when we do, there are things that still go unspoken, for they should never be spoken. Not while the right audience is no longer around to listen. And we never mention the trolls.

With their departure, I believe we each lost a piece of ourselves. Maybe it was the pressure of trying to survive Sburb that caused such a frenzy of feeling in our group, but by the end, human-troll relations were a tangle of quadrants and emotion hard to quite fathom from either side. There is a piece of me, somewhere in space and years ago, that I think will always lie with a certain jade-blooded vampire. The time we had to fall in love was short, but it was enough. Between the fighting, the explaining, and the hours of silly teenage drama, a bond was formed without my complete knowledge. The nature of the game was such that the moment victory was in our grasp, we were to have that which we most wished for - to stay with our dear friends - ripped away. 

It came down to a decision between the revival of our planets and the maintaining of the close-knit relationships we had formed, or begun to, with our very different friends.

Our last conversation was a pesterlog. I have it saved to my laptop. I also keep it as the only file on a key drive, a CD, and on two separate file-hosting sites. 

Naturally, since it took place, I haven't looked at it once.

Those are my quiet secrets. The others have secrets of a similar nature tucked away in their own memories. It shows in the weariness of their speech and in the longing that fills the silences when spiders are mentioned, or perhaps the color red. "Fuckass" is a word we will never say again.

But just because we don't talk about these things, doesn't mean we do not remember. We have our little jokes. We secure our Sweet Bro and Hella Jeff references with each other, just as enthusiastic as before, if a trifle ironic as we do so. We laugh when at school we learn about greek monsters like Echidna and Typheus, for to us, they were more guides and foes than legends. Rumors of alien invasions get out, and we chuckle for a moment, trying not to wonder if there's even a chance that they could find a way.

For a writer such as myself, I think I will never write the same way again. My patron troll taught me much about the way trolls see romance, and to my astonishment, I have found that the principles apply to human romance as well, in some ways. The flushed and caliginous quadrants have obvious matches in human society. The pale and ashen quadrants need slight adjustment. Moirallegiance in troll society is about keeping one another from being dangerous, but at its most basic level, it is about two opposites finding balance and keeping each other from being foolish. The danger is less of a threat in our more peaceful society, but finding balance in another human 

being is similar to finding a sort of platonic soul mate. In my opinion, one only needs to look at the tale of the greatest fictional detective of all time (and his faithful doctor) to see an example of that. Auspistice becomes not so much a substitute for kismesis where kismesis should not exist, but also incorporates for lesser hatreds, bereft of sexual tension but still strained and still somewhat co-dependent.

Sometimes I think I will write a book. It'll be about a young prophetess who goes out on a journey, meeting a witch, a knight, and a fairy child along the way. She would also meet a vampire, and the two would kindle between them a romance like no other. The vampire would explain that vampire love comes in four different ways. 

It would probably sell many copies. If Twilight can, why not a piece of genuinely decent literature, aimed at a similar group? I would have a fanbase. Perhaps I would even have slash writers delivering porn about the various male characters. My fanbase would obsess and deign to learn every aspect of the four romances, and perhaps, if I was lucky, some of them would even understand. 

Perhaps then I could feel less alone with what I know. Perhaps it is the psychologist, and maybe even the sociologist, in me, but I find these romances fascinating. I have yet to encounter a case where they, when accompanied by friendship, cannot be applied. When I write my mildly ironic wizard slash, I focus on a specific aspect of romance. I write a perfect kismesis between two of them, for example, but when I publish, I only frustrate myself. The others in my community reduce the scope of kismesis to mere "hatesex," and I cannot help but flinch and take it personally, wondering why they just can't _see_ the truth I try to hide between the lines.

I will never write this book.

Worse still, it's not only to fiction that I apply these things. The other three haven't studied the quadrants as in-depth as I, but they have the basic grasp of each. 

When Dave speaks of "some douchebag" that passed him in the hallway, I tease and brazenly ask if it's kismesis at first sight. It's strange. Between ourselves, I think we could have sex with any kismesis we might pick up without repercussions. We all understand. Troll romance is not monogamy, but neither does it quite apply to polyamory either. We four hold a secret pact that we will never blame each other, whatever happens, for any and all quadrants that end up filled.

On occasion I do mourn the fact that because of this I will likely never hold a quite proper loving relationship. If ever I should fall in a concupiscent love with Jade, John, or Dave, I would have to either hide it from the holder of my other concupiscent quadrant, or I could never quite fulfill the hatred or pity I might feel. 

Unless any future partner of mine is very, very open-minded, I don't believe I will ever feel quite whole. The troll romances call to me more than the human version, shallow and confusing, ever did. 

However, the point is moot. While in the years since Sburb I have fallen in and out of the various kinds of love multiple times, never has anything worked out. Worse still, I have grown up to be something utterly despicable: beautiful. Perhaps not in a traditional way, but certainly in a way that has left a trail of boys and girls in my wake throughout my days. I don't intend for it to happen, but it does: however single I happen to be, there is always some brave fool who thinks they know me. I wonder if they can ever truly know me. I wonder if I can let them.

Maybe, if I cared enoigh, I could. It's difficult. When I was thirteen years old, I brought the world back from an apocalypse. How does anyone explain that? Is it even possible, without sounding entirely mad? None of it makes any sense. One day, I hope I am lucky enough to find somebody willing, quite simply, to listen and withhold judgement. For all my secrets, my wishes, my privacy, I think I could do that. For the right person.

Perhaps, with John's help. 

Dave is my brother, I know that now. Perhaps phallic imagery worms its way into our discussions just a bit too often, but in most ways, we are like typical bickering siblings. We dip our toes sometimes in the pool of implied incest, but I think neither of us care to open that can of worms, however fun it would be to see the rest of the world squirm in horror and despair.

Jade is my solid friend. We talk to each other about whatever we want, including, of course, girl talk. Sburb brought us closer, I realize. Our relationship had once been edged and hard to navigate as we tried to find mutual interest in things. Now, our conversation flows freely. Neither of us ever tell Dave or John each other's secrets. There are some things that are simply for girls to know, and that's all there is to say on the matter.

John is special. I think I recognize now that he holds a spot in my life that goes a little bit beyond Dave and Jade. No, I'm not in love with him.

As I've said before, he keeps me open. He's delightfully adept at making me smile. He doesn't just make me smirk, he gives me the full feeling of laughing out loud, my lips stretched across my face and my eyes squeezed shut, cheerful. On our bad days, we share our concerns and worries, our fears and confusions. I've imagined leaning on his shoulder more times than I can count. Neither of us had explicit matesprits among the trolls, but the potential was there, and together we have been known to wonder: would it be worse if we had taken that step, or is it worse knowing the possibility was there, and we never acted upon it? We share that sorrow. Finally, when I need a bit of grounding, he does it. I use logic by rhetoric, and he counters it with logic by math. When he finds it necessary to take me down a notch, he's always right. Of course he is. He's John.

I don't think I will say anything to him. It's perhaps an open secret. I'm not in love with John, no, but I do love him. We keep each other from being foolish, and give each other constant and unquestionable support. I will never show him my notebooks. Some of them have little doodles in them, and a few of them read "Rose Lalonde <> John Egbert," with similar variation dashed across the margins.

There is a tacit moirallegiance between us. Or, at least, it feels like one to me. I suppose unless he mentions it or until we meet again in person, we'll never know. 

One step at a time, I tell myself, and it seems to work.

Sburb has broken and rebuilt all of us in ways we could never imagine. We were six sweeps old, and now we are older than that, but while the world has grown up around us, we haven't had to do much growing. I wonder when the universe will finally catch up.

I am no longer afraid of monsters, or of the dark. I am afraid of myself, and my capacity to invite ruin. But I am also confident that I have three friends who would never think about leaving me behind or refusing to help me when I needed it. We have been through so much.

Strider still looks at his watch and plays with sharp, pointy objects. Jade feeds Bec his irradiated steak, and John plays harmless pranks on everybody he meets. I still write wizard slash. It's more enjoyable than you might think.

I have seen the dark. But the dark is simply the absence of light. Perhaps that's why I was named the Seer of it. The others directly act, but I make it a habit of mine to always watch, and in doing so, to understand. Where there is a lack of knowledge, there is a shadow, and a potential for fear. I am the one who brings the secrets and stories of the world to light, such that we may all accept and understand them. The only things I hold in the dark are the secrets that must be kept. I am the person who does all this, and I always have been.

It is with hope that I have brought some measure of light to you, dear reader, that I depart from my arduous narrative of the things you don't know and the things which are important to me. You may make of my words what you wish, but know that they are the truth, as I know it. 

When I recall the grimness of the time the horrorterrors took me, I do remember one thing - a name. It seems fitting that the Fallen Angel of Light, Lucifer, should be the one whose powers I borrowed at that time. I can safely say that I have been to hell and met with Satan. I will never forget it.

I have many regrets, and there remains much in this world that I would like to learn, little wisdoms I want to keep. But I am on my way. "Rage, rage against the dying of the light," said Dylan Thomas. I will not go gentle into this good night.

Sincerely,

TentacleTherapist,

alias Miss Rose Lalonde.


End file.
